hyphens are great for sending messages in morse code
Type bush furniture into Google without the hypen just type bush furniture. Then look at where bush-furniture.com.au sits. Just goes to dhow the hypen can also still get on first page which generates an income for this business so thats value right there.
http:// www.byron-bay. com is a great exception but proves an earlier point about how it takes an inhouse effort to make it work, the guys behind this VERY successful website have been at it SOLID for @ 15 years AND know their stuff but "you couldn't pay to have it done for you" , they lived on toast and vegemite in the early days and are now reaping the rewards.
tim
I think the point is they are only good for SEO and nothing else.
Question:
For the people saying, look at the Google rank for keyword-keyword.com.au etc, why would anyone think Google would treat them any differently to a name without a hyphen? Google isn't likely to apply a penalty. Really every second domain in the serps would be a hyphen if business liked them.
I think the point is they are only good for SEO and nothing else.
Yes agreed (and PPC too), however do not underestimate SEO. Plenty of businesses gain 100% of their customers from the web and are quite happy doing so rather than trying to create a brand or engaging in expensive offline marketing.
And if you can buy a hyphenated name for 1/10th- 1/20th (guess here) of the price of a non-hyphenated and are happy to adopt that strategy then why not.
I think it comes back to bite when people want to reorder, or take a while to order initially and try to remember the web address, or forget to type in the hyphen or hear about the site from a friend.
If the domain is 1/20 the price and you lose say 3% of your sales is that worth it?
Most .com.au's are not worth much so the difference between spending say $40 on a hyphen and $800 on the non hyphen is not going to be worth giving up a chuck of your sales for.
Not many people would try to build a business around a $800 domain (or $40 if hyphenated).
The question is whether one is better to pay $3,500 for car-hire.com.au or $70K for carhire.com.au if you have a view to developing it. Personally I can see both sides of the story.
Most people build businesses around reg fee names.
If my budget was $70,000 I would go for the non hyphen. If my budget was $3,500 I would go for a weaker term without a hyphen. Two completely different price brackets and types of buyers.
Most people don't understand domains. We're trying to discuss, what the intelligent, informed choice would be.
I wouldn't pigeonhole buyers by their budgets tbh. Again, we're trying to be analytical about this - what's the best thing to do from an ROI basis. If you restrict the Investment part of this it makes it impossible.
If you go to the website is is pretty easy to see the "mistake" and the "cure". They have bought byronbay.com and calling the site that, this looks like a relatively recent change. Maybe they could have got even smarter and bought the .au.
So obviously the site owners see an issue with the hyphen to be moving away from it. I would imagine they couldn't decommission the hyphen for a long time though because of all the links, history etc. In my opinion it is a good example of a site which has been successful despite multiple issues with their domain.
Well I don't think they own byronbay.com.au unless the owner of Roamfree has sold it to them. I use to own byronbay.com.au and net.au and had a big payday a couple of years ago when I had an offer to good to refuse.They started before you were allowed to buy the .com.au, so they had the hypened .com. and .com.au and YES, they have sooooo many backlinks and rankings thats why they are slow to move but i'm pretty sure they own the byronbay.com.au even though it looks totally different i think this is their next transition.
i think the .com is important here for them as byron has soooooo many international visitors. same goes for cairns and goldcoast businesses. ( as they are another 2 places i visit and have clients )
These guys are SEO programmers so they will be making all the right moves and perhaps by having a few different domains they take up move postions as well on the first page whilst trying to keep enough different content so not to piss off google.
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:d
I think it comes back to bite when people want to reorder, or take a while to order initially and try to remember the web address, or forget to type in the hyphen or hear about the site from a friend.
So then they google it...
Get with the times.
However I agree about hyphens in a domain not being an ideal domain for branding. (Unless you're European?)
They won't need to Google it, they can buy from the guy with the non hyphen.
They won't need to google it a second time, but they won't be buying from the guy with the non-hyphen either. You need to upgrade your browser, or your phone.